Regexp only digits from varchar

[Former Member]

Hello,

is there an easy way to select only the digits from a varchar column in Sqlanywhere 12 or 16? I would like to remove all other chars than digits from the varchar. (1234)56/78 should be 12345678.

Thank you Andreas

[Former Member]

Regular Expressions are useful in search criteria but not really applicable to string manipulation. You can try using the REPLACE() function, as in:

select replace( replace( replace('(1234)56/78','(','') ,')','') ,'/','')

And yes, there are 3 nested calls to this function, 1 per character to be replaced.

[VolkerBarth]

Look at that other FAQ with a similar, although more general topic:

How to strip several different characters from a string?

Mark's first sample should do the trick.